


Skeins

by feralphoenix



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Ashen Romance | Auspistice, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Matchmaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 07:49:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rose proposes the formation of a knitting club via fancy flyers, Kanaya is intrigued, and Vriska positively flings herself upon the chance to be the one doing the meddling for a change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skeins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [overthetiber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/overthetiber/gifts).



> My personal interpretation of the conciliatory quadrants is that moirails are there to help their partners with _intra_ personal problems, and auspitices manage their partners' _inter_ personal issues.

The flyer had been printed on pale lavender paper, in flowing scripted font and with golden curlicues stamped along the top and the bottom. Its corners might have been covered by some of the other things pinned to the bulletin board, but it still stood out by miles.

“It’s terribly garish,” Kanaya proclaimed, even though her lips were attempting to warp into a smile. “I don’t see how it’s meant to attract _anyone,_ really.”

“It’s attracting _you,”_ Vriska retorted dryly from where she stood at Kanaya’s shoulder, “so I guess it’s still doing what it’s supposed to. Which is just what Her Purple Proseness wants, I bet. _Anything_ this over-the-top is probably supposed to be passive-aggressive, and I can’t imagine _her_ wanting to start any kinda club without her actually meaning it to be the Snarky Horseshit Club in secret.”

“Vriska.”

“I’m not Zahhak, you won’t hear _me_ saying humans can’t understand quadrants, but if Lalonde is really red for you I wish she’d just come out and say it already. Jeeeeeeeez, Lalonde-Striders are always so _dramatic.”_

 _“Vriska.”_

“Shoosh,” she said, and waved her hand dismissively. “I am busy managing your quadrants, Kanaya, because this is clearly an invitation from Lalonde to resolve this excruciatingly _boring_ red-black flirty stupid dumb tango you have been dancing for ages. We are going to do this, and you are going to have a concupiscent quadrant filled by the end of this year, because I am the best at this and you deserve only the best romances.”

 _“ **Vriska.** ”_ She turned, at last, though Kanaya had the sneaking suspicion that it was only because she was done with her tirade. “It is, of course, still completely possible that Rose simply wants to start a knitting club for the sake of starting a knitting club.”

“Nope.” Vriska crossed her arms over her chest and smirked proudly. “She is _clearly_ scheming something.”

“Clubs need to have at least six prospective members including the founder, or they will be disbanded. I highly doubt that this is an invitation to form a quadrant, considering.”

Vriska held up her hand and started ticking off her fingers. “Where Lalonde goes, Harley is going to follow, because they’re in cahoots. After that there’s you, as the quadrant invitee, and then there’s me, because we are in this mess together. That’s four. Anything involving shipping and yarn will attract Leijon, so she’ll be all over this. And anything involving bright colors will attract Pyrope, who will come to slobber all over things and snicker like the matriarchal laughbeasts of Africa. Six! And then if Megido and Peixes can squish it into their busy schedules since so many mutual friends will be there already, we will have eight people, which will be the best because eight is the best number. We have got this _in the bag.”_

“Vriska, what makes you so certain that this is a romantic invitation anyway?”

 _“Because,_ Fussyfangs Maryam,” Vriska said very slowly, “it is completely over-the-top, which means it’s going on the horseshit-o-meter, and also it involves Lalonde and sewing, your two favorite things.”

“Knitting and sewing are entirely different things.”

“Close enough.”

Kanaya sighed.

“Your admirable and surely well-intentioned attempt to manage my romantic prospects set quite aside, I had been thinking that we should at least go to the first meeting,” she said slowly. Vriska seemed to be done, and was watching Kanaya with hands planted on her hips, fingers run through the belt loops of her wince-worthily battered old jeans. “It’s a chance to share some quiet entertainment with everyone else, and it should also be a nice excuse to keep you out of your house for longer.”

From someone else, such bald concern would probably make Vriska throw an absolute fit, but here and now she just laughed.

“See, this is why you and I are such a good team,” she proclaimed grandly. “We are _always_ looking out for each other.”

 

-           -           -

 

The flyer detailed that the first meeting of the school’s first official knitting club (actual state of _official_ pending) was to take place at four thirty in the afternoon, sharp, in Ms. Paint’s textile room. This was half an hour after classes let out, which gave Kanaya more than enough time to sort out her things properly, sort out Vriska’s things while she whined, and gently steer her best friend down the halls even as Vriska kept wanting to veer off distractedly. They got there ten minutes early.

It’s a shame that Ms. Paint herself couldn’t actually be there, Kanaya thought as she pushed the door open. The textile room was a large and airy room on the third floor of the school. From what Aradia had mentioned once in conversation, this place had been a music room a long time ago, before the music program had gotten bigger and been split into band and orchestra and choir and further split into separate groups based on year and skill level. The entire school building itself was quite the storied place, and had apparently been rebuilt and expanded over and over and over again during the past century or so.

This late in the year, the sky was already turning the color of strawberry and mango sorbet. One full wall of the textile room was taken up by windows, and the overhead lights had been shut off and all the curtains opened so that the natural lighting could stream in.

The view was quite beautiful, even as it washed out the colors of all the wide bolts of cloth strewn across the room. Kanaya ran her fingertips along the edge of a table as she looked about: A circle of the huge squishy poufs some of the younger students used for individual sewing had been drawn up in the center of the room, and the tables and modeling dummies pushed toward the walls. She shouldn’t have expected any less of Rose. It took an avid writer and reader to set an atmosphere like this so well.

“What, nobody else is even _here_ yet?” Vriska took one look around at everything, shrugged, and plopped down on a pouf, curling up on her side. Her long hair and tattered jacket flew out along the edge of her seat, and she closed her eyes, not even bothering to take off her shoes and her glasses. “Boring.”

“We are ten minutes early,” Kanaya supplied. “They’ll likely make it in later.”

Vriska didn’t respond. Kanaya shook her head and sat down on the pouf next to hers, crossing her feet at the ankles. She had finished her last project for the week already, and so there wasn’t really anything else for her to do unless she wanted to start drafting a new outfit design. That seemed useless when she was going to have to put it aside to learn how to knit in—she pulled her cellphone out of her handbag by the strap—only six minutes now.

“Vriska,” she called in a low voice.

“’M not asleep,” Vriska replied, frowning and still not opening her eyes. She raised her left hand to flip it a little, and the golden orange of her nails caught the light in a way that was almost dizzying.

“I’ll leave you be to not sleep, then.”

“Shut it, Fussyfangs.”

The door opened.

The toe of Rose’s black-slippered foot entered first. The rest of her followed in a fluid, sweeping motion like a lady in a grand dress slipping into the ballroom. Today, as always, she was wearing a voluminous skirt that reached all the way down to her ankles. Her arms were bare but for the tiny puffs of her babydoll sleeves, the neckline of her shirt let her pristine clavicle peek over the hem, and her short hair framed her face perfectly, with not a single strand out of place. Her lips were pure black today—or maybe just such a deep shade of violet that they looked black in the deep orange lighting of the sunset—and there were ornate needles poking out of the bag slung over her shoulder.

“I might have known,” she proclaimed, and even her voice was perfectly arch and stately. One of her eyebrows was quirked ever so slightly. Kanaya could have turned into a senseless puddle of red-black bliss on the spot. Rose was beautiful, and it was maddening—infuriating and thrilling all at once. “I had wondered if you had managed to miss my invitation when I didn’t encounter you on the way here, but I see I should have considered this possibility instead.”

“Just you? Ugh, what is _up_ with that? Don’t tell me I’m suddenly the awkward third tire on this love-hate date wheel device.” Vriska was up on her elbows all of a sudden, alert and torpedoing the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean.

“Oh no, not at all. Jade and Nepeta should be joining us later, at least. There was a bit of an _incident,_ and the two of them are escorting the delightful Ms. Pyrope over to the local craft store to purchase us some new red yarn.”

Kanaya distinctly felt her eyebrows approach her hairline.

“Typical Terezi. _Somebody_ ought to teach her to keep her tongue to herself, or at least only slobber on the people who _want_ to get tongue-molested, by which I mean your brother the pet coolkid and Vantas.” There was a crunch of bean stuffing as Vriska propelled herself upwards. _“So._ While we wait for this party to get itself started, everybody gimme a dollar.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Someone needs to do a caffeine run, right? I am the best, so I am going to get myself off the duty list first,” and she held a hand out towards each of them, “you had better be reeeeeeeeally grateful.”

Kanaya removed her wallet from her handbag and offered up the dollar. Rose, she noted, did not follow suit until after she had placed the money in Vriska’s hand.

“Awesome,” Vriska said, and up she got from the pouf. “Any requests? There’s iced coffee and iced tea and soda, and I am more than happy to just roll my dice and leave it up to luck if you can’t decide.”

“Perrier, please,” Rose cut in. Kanaya didn’t bother to answer; Vriska knew what she liked.

“Wow, what?” And Vriska started laughing. “Do the vending machines here even _have_ mineral water?”

“They should. This is the main place from which I procure all my favorite beverages.”

“Okaaaaaaaay, but if it’s not actually a buck you get the roulette.”

Vriska pulled herself up and sashayed out of the room. Rose crossed the floor in perfect measured strides and claimed the cushion on Kanaya’s other side.

“So, how shall we pass the time until our company returns, Ms. Maryam?” she asked. Her voice was mild, but her smile was the kind of wicked that made it difficult for Kanaya to look anywhere but the perfect movie-star sweep of her lips.

 _“Psssssssst.”_

Kanaya jumped slightly where she sat, and as Rose turned politely back towards the door, Kanaya swiveled to look alongside her.

Vriska was leaning back through the door at an angle that suggested she was balancing on one foot. Her eyebrows were drawn down, she had one hand on the edge of the door and another cupped sideways before her face like she was shouting down the hall, and there was a mad kind of gleam in her eyes.

“There had _better_ be sloppy interspecies makeouts for me to interrupt when I get back here,” she stage-whispered, and then turned dramatically and vanished down the hall, leaving the door to slam shut behind her.

Rose turned very, very slowly to face Kanaya, and the precise angle of her lips and cheek suggested suppressed laughter as she rested her chin upon the heels of her hands.

“Kanaya,” she said solemnly, “your auspitice is quite something.”

There was nothing else she could do. Kanaya buried her face in her hands and began to laugh.


End file.
